From The Washington Post:
Midwestern retirees helped turn Florida red. Now they could push it left.
Along Florida’s Gulf Coast, Midwestern sensibilities and an affordability crisis have put Trump-voting districts back into play.
“I’m really unhappy with the way my life is right now. I can’t believe a can of soup costs $3,” Carlson said, gesturing at the grocery bag she carried outside a Publix supermarket in Pinellas County.
She said she regrets voting for President Donald Trump and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) in 2024.
If Florida has any chance of turning blue next week, an uphill battle for Democrats, it depends in part on voters like Carlson. Midwestern retirees, who have moved to Florida by the hundreds of thousands, have helped turn a swing state into a Republican stronghold over the past decade. But the cost of living under the Trump administration have left many struggling to afford the retirement they envisioned.
“I expected things to change, but now I feel it’s got worse,” Carlson said. “There’s too many rich people running the country that don’t think much about the middle class.”
She is leaning toward voting for Democratic candidates on Nov. 3.
Like voters still in the Midwest, many of these transplants are preparing to vote for Democrats. It’s one of the primary reasons that some Democratic strategists believe a handful of Florida races that were considered longshots for the party earlier this year are suddenly competitive.
Steve Schale, a Democratic strategist who led Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign in Florida, described the state as a “mirror” that reflects the politics and values of the states residents flocked from, including the “fairly moderate” politics of the Midwest.
Statewide, like nationwide, Hispanic voters form the largest and most important swing voter group this election cycle, Schale said. But, along Florida’s Gulf Coast, Midwestern retirees, attracted by warm weather and no income tax on retirement benefits, could play a disproportionate role in determining election outcomes.
Around 8 percent of Florida’s 23 million residents were born in the Midwest, according to Census data, and many reside in the Tampa Bay area.
Tampa Bay’s Pinellas County has swung for the winning presidential candidate in every election since 2004.
“It’s the same kind of voter that’s impacting the Iowa governor’s race or the Michigan Senate race,” Schale said, pointing to white, older blue-collar voters.
The nonpartisan Cook Political Report last month changed its rating of Florida’s 13th Congressional District, which covers a large part of Pinellas County, from Likely Republican to Lean Republican. The change was surprising because state Republicans redrew the district to become more GOP-friendly. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R), elected in 2022, represents the district, which Trump carried by 13 percentage points in 2024, under the new boundaries.
Luna, a Trump ally and U.S. Air Force veteran, faces Leela Gray, an attorney and retired Army brigadier general. Democrats similarly hope they can put the governor’s race back into play with Democratic candidate David Jolly, who once represented the 13th District as a Republican. Cook recently changed that race from Solid Republican to Likely Republican, and made the same rating change on Friday for the Senate race.
Tina Robinson and Ana Nunez, longtime Democrats who migrated to Florida from Missouri and Illinois and live in the neighboring 14th Congressional District, feel the rising prices acutely. The 68-year-old friends moved to the state for an improved quality of life but now find themselves dependent on charities like Feeding Tampa Bay, a food bank.
“Food went up, but Social Security is only going to rise by 3.6 percent next year, so what are you gaining? You’re losing,” said Nunez, a retired insurance agency employee, who wanted to escape the Midwest’s cold weather that worsens the effects of her Parkinson’s disease.
Robinson, a former financial aid officer, took early retirement after suffering multiple heart attacks and requires a tracheostomy tube to help with breathing. She said that the $200-a-month oxygen supply required by her medical ventilator, which isn’t covered by Medicaid, is one of her biggest expenses. With the addition of rising grocery prices to her monthly budget, she said she would be “dead” without the help of Feeding Tampa Bay, which supplements the $23 a month she receives in SNAP food assistance benefit.
Their congressional district in the Tampa Bay area was similarly redistricted to exclude Democratic-leaning parts of St. Petersburg and become more favorable to Republicans. But in August, Cook shifted its race rating from “Lean Republican” to “Toss Up.”
Nunez has little faith that either party will focus on improving the lives of seniors but will still cast her vote, as always, for the Democratic candidates.
Rep. Byron Donalds, the Republican nominee for governor, said that his party will ease the financial pressure on retirees.
“We want to make it more affordable for seniors in particular,” Donalds said in an interview during a rally for Luna, citing his plans to lower homeowner insurance costs by 20 percent.
“But you don’t do that by voting for a party that destroyed other states. They destroyed California. They destroyed New York. They destroyed Illinois. That’s why so many people have come to Florida,” Donalds said.
Luna, who declined an interview request, rejects the premise that Democrats are making gains in Florida.
“Florida is a very red state and we have gotten more Red, at least in my district, since 2020 as a result of failed Covid policies in blue states,” Luna said in a statement.
Sandi Manna, who attended the rally for Luna, said she moved to Florida from Illinois in February, attracted by the state’s Republican politics.
She said her top concern is the cost of living in the state, but she has faith in Republicans to turn the economy around.
We have a lot of new streams of income from our tariffs, and we are going to be doing better than we ever have,” said Manna, 53.
However, she acknowledged that not all Midwesterners in Florida thought like her.
It’s not just affordability driving some Midwestern retirees away from the Republican Party; it’s also the president.
Steve Larson, 77, an independent voter who retired to Florida in 2012, said he has gravitated more to Democrats since Trump took office in 2017.
He said he is unhappy with the Trump administration’s use of Immigration and Customs Enforcement in his home state of Minnesota, which involved the deployment of thousands of ICE agents and officers early this year and ended after the fatal shootings of two protesters. “They’re not qualified individuals,” Larson said of the agents. “You may as well hire a bunch of Hells Angels.”
His vote, however, is ultimately decided by one factor.
“Coming from Minnesota, I have values” of being neighborly, he said. “I take those values when I go in to vote: Who of the candidates has those same feelings?’”
This election, he considers the Democrats, not Trump or his allies, more Midwest nice.
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